


all alone, more or less

by gingertime



Category: Red Dwarf, True Detective
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen, One Shot, i cannot believe i actually wrote this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-12
Updated: 2014-03-12
Packaged: 2018-01-15 12:12:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1304455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingertime/pseuds/gingertime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Martin Hart emerges from three million years of stasis as the last human alive.</p><p>Red Dwarf fusion AU - no Red Dwarf characters actually appear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all alone, more or less

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably the most self-indulgent thing I've ever written and I am so, so sorry.
> 
> Also, I could not for the life of me figure out which actual character from True Detective to make the ship's intelligent computer, so that's why he's Nic Pizzolatto. Because... reasons.

_“This is an SOS distress call from the mining ship Carcosa. The crew are dead, killed by a radiation leak. The only survivors were Martin Hart, who was in suspended animation during the disaster, and his pet bird, who was safely sealed in the hold. Revived three million years later, Hart’s only companions are a lifeform who evolved from his bird, and Rustin Cohle, a hologram simulation of his dead bunkmate. Message ends.”_

 

The door to the stasis pod clicked open, and Martin Hart strode out. It felt like no time had passed at all since he’d been sentenced to seventeen months in stasis for indecency and insubordination of Navigation Officer Maggie Keen (plus one month for bringing an unquarantined animal aboard), but then again, he supposed that was the point of stasis.

The corridors of the _Carcosa_ were oddly empty, his footsteps echoing strangely off the paneled walls and the absence of the usual noise and commotion burning in his ears. Where was everyone?

Hart took the long way around to the drive room, walking through all his familiar haunts. The recreation deck-- nobody. The cafeteria-- nobody. The conference room above the girls’ locker room, with the little grate you could open to see down below-- nobody!

He made it to the drive room, which was normally swarming with officers and crew. But, like the rest of the ship, it was vacant. Piles of white dust dotted the room, on chairs and on counters, and Hart tentatively inspected one of the mounds. It looked inert, stable, and by dint of the fact that he was not currently choking or coughing, he assumed that it was harmless.

“Where the hell is everyone?” he said out loud, scratching his head in confusion.

The ship’s intelligent computer, Nic, appeared on a monitor nearby.

“They’re dead, Marty,” he said.

“Who is?”

“Everybody, Marty.”

“What, Captain Tuttle?”

“Everybody’s dead, Marty.”

“What, Gilbough?”

“They’re all dead, everybody’s dead, Marty!”

“Papania isn’t, is he?”

“Everybody is dead, Marty!”

“...Cohle?”

“He’s dead, Marty, everybody’s dead!”

Hart collapsed into a nearby chair, but stood back up again abruptly when he realized he’d sat on another pile of that strange powder.

“What is this goddamn stuff?” he exclaimed.

“That’s Captain Tuttle,” Nic said matter-of-factly.

Hart jumped back. “That’s--? Fuck! What happened here?”

“There was a radiation leak,” said Nic. “A lethal dose of cadmium-2 due to a faulty drive plate. I couldn’t let you out until the radiation had reached a safe background level.”

“And about how long did that take, exactly?” asked Hart, suspiciously, fearing the worst.

“Three million years. Sorry about that,” said Nic.

"Christ," said Hart. He stood for a moment, his eyes closed, trying to comprehend the magnitude of it all.

He opened his eyes, remembering something important. "And what about Maggie?" he asked slowly, afraid of what the answer would be. "Maggie Keen?"

"She's dead too, Marty," Nic said.

"Aw, fuck," said Hart, his hands balling into fists. “I was-- I was gonna ask her out! We were gonna get married! I had a _plan_!”

“Marty, I know it’s been a while, and your memory might have decayed during suspended animation, but you were sentenced to seventeen months in stasis for repeated harassment of Navigation Officer Maggie Keen.”

“It wasn’t harassment!” protested Hart. “I was _flirting_.”

“Right,” scoffed Nic. “I’ve got the security video right here, want me to pull it up--”

“No-- no!” Hart said quickly, stretching out his hands in the universal gesture of _don’t you dare_.

“So you do remember!” Nic said. Hart scowled, and gave him the middle finger.

Hart leaned back on a bank of navigation instruments next to Nic’s display. “She was gonna be Mrs. Hart,” he mused quietly. “‘Maggie Hart.’ It’s got a beautiful ring to it, don’t it?”

Nic just shook his artificially intelligent head, smirking.

“So I’m all on my own?” Hart asked.

“Well, technically speaking.”

Hart looked around, saw nobody. “What d’you mean, technically speaking?”

And then, through the door of the drive room, walked the person that Martin Hart wanted least to see in the entire universe.

“Hello, Marty,” drawled his bunkmate, Rust Cohle.

 

*******

 

Cohle followed Hart relentlessly, down the labyrinthine hallways of the _Carcosa_ , around corners and into rooms that would never again serve their purpose.

“Look, I said fuck off!” said Hart, finally spinning around to face Cohle, a warning finger up in his face.

“Not gonna do that,” Cohle said.

“Just ‘cause you’re a hologram now and can’t touch shit like you used to don’t mean we’re suddenly all buddy-buddy,” Hart growled.

“You think I like bein’ dead, man?” Cohle spat. “You think I’m enjoyin’ the prospect of spending the rest of my days as an immortal being of light, with the sole task of keeping your sorry ass in line?”

Hart laughed humorlessly. “You used to go on and on about how much you thought existence was pointless, and how it would’ve been better if you’d never been born, and all that-- don’t think I don’t remember. The way I see it, you should be fuckin’ rejoicing!”

Just as Cohle had opened his mouth, probably to deliver a characteristically wordy and metaphysical response, a grate on the corridor wall popped open with a clang.

Hart and Cohle watched in horrified silence as someone crawled out of the grate and unfolded themselves before the two men.

He was impossibly tall, rugged and rangy like a weed left to grow unchecked in the wilderness. Around his mouth was a crisscross of scar tissue, and his eyes were yellow and glinting with steely intelligence.

"Who the fuck are you?" said Cohle.

"Who the fuck are you?" echoed back the man, in a perfect imitation of Cohle's lazy twang.

"Hey, I thought I was the only one left," Hart said, stepping backwards, away from the looming threat of this unknown intruder. He wished he had a bazookoid to defend himself with; Cohle would emerge unharmed from any confrontation in his untouchable state, but Hart was still flesh and blood-- _important_ flesh and blood!

“The Yellow King walks in the _Carcosa_ ,” the man said, and now his voice was thick, deep, slurred. “I am the transcendent last, the endpoint of the ages. I felt you coming. And I will feel you go.”

And then he was gone, down the corridor to the left.

Hart exchanged nervous glances with Cohle, their argument practically forgotten. In unison, they headed off in the opposite direction, towards their bunk.

 

*******

 

“Who in the hell was that-- that Yellow King guy?” Hart asked Nic, whose head appeared promptly on the bunk-side display as Cohle sullenly sat down at the table in the middle of the room, listening.

“Remember your bird, Marty?” Nic said.

“Yeah, Sam. What about her? They took her away when they put me into stasis. Wasn’t supposed to have her in the first place, you know.”

“During the radioactive crisis, she was safely sealed in the hold. She laid eggs, and her chicks proceeded to breed there for three million years. And they’ve evolved into the lifeform you just saw in the corridor.”

“I don’t--”

“Look, Marty, you know how mankind evolved from apes?” Cohle said.

“Yeah, but--”

“That guy we just saw, he evolved from birds. His ancestors were birds. He is a bird. Hence the penchant for mimicry, I’d assume.”

“You are correct,” Nic confirmed.

“Great,” grunted Hart. “Just what I needed. Now I’ve got a cryptic, possibly murderous bird bastard to keep me company as well as a see-through existential motherfucker.”

He thought for a moment, considering his options. “How long’ll it take to get back to Earth?” he asked.

“Oh, a while,” responded Nic. “We’re three million years into deep space, and this ship’s millennia behind on its scheduled maintenance. It was a bit of a junker to begin with, but now, well, I don’t think it could pull a three-point turn.”

“Three million years,” said Cohle. “Wonder if anything’s left back on that entropy-riddled hellhole of a home planet. Could be there’s nothing left, that we’ve driven ourselves into extinction in accordance with the way of all things. Don’t bother deludin’ yourself, man, the vacuum’s a desert and there ain’t no Silk Road.”

“Or,” said Hart, “you could shut the fuck up, quit stompin’ on my goddamn dreams.”

Cohle responded with his middle finger.

“Why did it have to be _him_ you brought back?” Hart groaned. “Couldn’t you have brought back someone else-- like Maggie! God, that would’ve been fuckin’ great, just me and her, all of the _Carcosa_ to ourselves… ”

“I brought Rust back because he was the best candidate to keep you sane,” Nic said.

“What? Why?”

“You exchanged less than three hundred words with Maggie Keen over the course of your courtship, and if I had hands I would’ve made air quotes around the word ‘courtship’ just then. According to my security tapes, however, your conversations with Rust Cohle have logged over fourteen million words.”

“Half those words were him telling me to fuck off,” said Hart, “and the other half was me telling him to fuck off!”

“I don’t deny it,” said Cohle, without looking Hart in the eye. “Nic, gimme a cigarette.”

A hologrammatic cigarette appeared in Cohle’s hand, already lit, and he took a deep drag. Not wanting to be left out, Hart rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a cigarette of his own.

“An hour ago-- three million years ago-- I was a lowly technician on an old mining ship, subject to the non-stop morbid ramblings of my bizzarro bunkmate. And now the only thing that’s changed is that I might be the last goddamn human being alive.”

“You expecting me to express sympathy at that pronouncement?” Cohle said. “You should be feeling sorry for _me_. I’m fuckin’ deceased, man! Dead as your chances of getting to fuck Maggie Keen ever were.”

Hart had to remind himself right then that if he were to take a swing at Cohle’s smug mug, his hand would pass straight through it.

After so long as Hart’s bunkmate, Cohle knew exactly what was going through Hart’s head. He raised his eyebrows, took another puff on his cigarette, let a millisecond-long smile pass across his face.

“Nic, set a course for Earth,” Hart told the computer, turning away from Cohle. “I’m gonna make it back home if it kills me.”

 

 


End file.
